I am back in Belo now to wittness a real Brasilien wedding. So tonight we will party the way the real people party... let' see.

I have decided to change my traveling plans and will fly back to Hamburg tomorrow! So I will back in my old home town Sunday morning 8am

Probably everybody has heard of the the big contrasts between the rich and the poor areas in Rio that's not what I am talking about. We experienced Rio with 2 totally different weather situations.
When we arrived in Rio it was 1.00 am!! Our plane was delayed by 3 hours. It was a bit difficult since our online bokking of a hotel was not successful. So in the end we had to trust a taxi driver at the airport, who offered a ride to a good hotel. All the people at the airport lokked a bit suspicious including the man who drove us. But, we must say he was a good man, did not overcharge us and organised a nice hotel for us. COPACABA..right next to the beach...the dream of many....

But it wasn't so lovely... the next 3 days it rained a lot, it was constantly overcast and it was quite cold. During those days Rio was not very nice. No were to go in the evening, no bar, no nice restaurant, realy nothing to do! Then, after 4 days the city awoke to its full beauty! Thuersday morning when we woke up the sun was shinning. For the first time we saw the how nice Rio can be. The beach was filled with people, all the little restaurants and kiosks were open...it was like we expected it.

The evening we went up the sugar loaf and expererienced a nice sun set and night seen from there.

For us Rio had to faces and unfortunately only showed the nice side for 1 day...

I forgot to mention the bad luck we had so far.

Sure,Itold you about the flu but the were more things:

My hotel room is icy cold. Even though I can't meassure it I guess it is approx. 10° C. The floors are cold tiles and I think the wall are all a bit wet. (This might have hepled me to get the flu!)
I only have 2 thin sheets and during the night I constantly loose one or even two... When I was sick I always felt cold, so what I did was, that I took my computer's power supply in my bed. It always gets very hot so I wanted to heat up my bed for a few minutes...unfortunately I fell asleep (must be because of the fever...) ad when I woke up the computer was off and my bed cold. The power supply had burned through!!! So since that evening I have no computer anymore...very bad for me! Difficult to work and no entertainment anymore.....*buuuuuhhh**

On our first day to work again, we had a car accident. The road to the mine is under construction and looks like a muddy dirt road at the moment. When we drove there a car was in front of us. The driver decided to stop at the right side of the road but when we were almost next to him he suddenly started an u-turn... We smashed right into the side of his car. Fortunately nobody was seriously injured, but it took a lot of time to sort out everything and we all had a bit of a shock...

and I will not bore you with the stories from work. It was bad as well but now it looks like we are winning!

...keep on swimming...

Thanks for all your good wishes; looks like they helped me to recover. I still look bad though and my voice reminds you more of a rosty siren but inside I am almost fine! ;-)

Time flies by...I am already 10 days here (missed 4 of them by constant sleeping and running to the toilet). Today (Saturday) is a very important day for us workwise. Since Klaus was also a bit sick we didn't make such a good progress in the beginning. Yesterday we achieved the 1st good sorting results with our little MikroSort. Today we have to prove that the unit can sort emeralds in stabil way. If we succeed today and the sorting results are fine Klaus, Astrid and I are off tomorrow heading for RIO!!!! 5 days we want to stay there and finally recover fully from our diseases! I hope we can go!!!!!!!!!!!!

And we will also go to a bar tonight and get pissed...I think we deserve it!

LET'S HOPE THE MIKROSORT WILL SORT THE EMERALDS!!!!!!!!!!!! ;-)